China is winning the Cold War 2.0 ... and we’re letting it happen

The threat to the United States from the People’s Republic of China is multifaceted, long-term, and aggressive. Whether it’s from military modernization to economic coercion, cyber warfare to space competition, China’s national security challenge is global, and it targets U.S. interests, values, security, and standing in the world.

While much of the focus of U.S. policymakers has been on the military threat from China, the communist country has also implemented a multipronged approach to weaken the United States economically, politically, culturally, and diplomatically. It is enlisting a whole-of-government strategy, blending civil and military approaches with tactics short of war to expand its influence and improve its geopolitical position.

The US is involved in a cold war with China and urgently needs to do more to stop its aggressive actions.

China's determined plan uses economics, media, education, politics, culture, diplomacy, and information — among many other approaches — in a highly integrated and orchestrated fashion. Its actions take place within the U.S. domestically. It seeks to undermine the U.S. regionally and globally, while sowing doubt in the minds of U.S. allies.

In short, in many respects, the U.S. is involved in a cold war with China and urgently needs to do more to stop its aggressive actions.

Reshaping public opinion

A central component of the cold war with China is the effort of its government to influence American public opinion and culture. The Chinese government has a veritable army of anonymous social media accounts, which it uses to not only present its views but to foment division among our people while silencing critics of its regime. It also distributes government-funded newspapers within the U.S., little more than propaganda broadsheets, and invests in key media infrastructure — not only to support its views but also to mute criticisms of its policies.

Additionally, through massive state support, it also seeks to shape American culture through supporting select movies, such as the 2019 movie "Midway," to create division between the alliance of the United States and Japan as well as prompting the temporary removal of the flag of Taiwan from the jacket of the actor Tom Cruise in the 2022 movie “Top Gun: Maverick.”

Much like the Soviet Union during the Cold War, China uses all of its resources to challenge, coerce, silence, and divide opinions about its policies and actions. It uses cultural influence as much as any other capability at its disposal.

No better example of China’s cold war tactics is what the regime has done to expand its capabilities in space. Through robust state-funded support, economic espionage, theft, and coercion, China has aggressively grown its constellation of satellites and other capabilities, giving its military and intelligence services, as well as its state-run industries, significant advantages. To this end, it has even tried to replicate Elon Musk’s reusable rocket concept, the Starship, as well as its Mechazilla Catching Tower.

These are just the latest examples of Chinese economic espionage, which has been going on for decades and done great harm to our commercial space companies. Even as it has advocated for peaceful uses of space, China has also aggressively militarized space, creating advantages that could be used in a future conflict. The U.S. needs to do a better job at confronting this sustained threat.

Attacking global institutions

The Chinese government has also sought to systematically expand its power and take over international institutions affiliated with the United Nations and other global and regional organizations. These efforts are made not only to expand its control but also to mute international criticism of China’s actions and to create diplomatic and other complications for the U.S. and its allies.

Consider China’s involvement with United Nations environmental organizations — how it has been able to silence criticism and prevent investigations of the activities of its maritime militia.

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China pillages fish stocks around the globe and often destroys reefs and harasses other national fishing fleets. It has also done much to downplay the country’s significant contributions to air pollution and how its development projects worldwide, as part of its Belt and Road Initiative, destroy the environment. Finally, it consistently seeks to reduce Taiwan’s role on the world’s stage and delegitimize its political system and exclude it from international forums.

While China’s leaders publicly call for peaceful relations with the United States, they are relentlessly pursuing a campaign to challenge the United States in virtually every economic, political, diplomatic, and military sphere of activity. China consistently seeks advantages using a sustained, long-term campaign of relentlessly expanding its influence using all of the resources of its government.

In many respects, our country is involved in a new cold war with China, requiring a similarly enduring approach that enlists not just the resources of the United States government but also of our own civil society, allies and partners, and freedom-loving people across the world. We must do a better job of making America first and China last.

Editor’s note: This article was published originally by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.